How anti-racism work and purpose work go hand-in-hand.

We see company after company issue statements about "being in solidarity with Black Lives Matters," which is wonderful, but there is also the question of will this stick. Will companies and people do enough of the actual anti-racism work to truly move us forward. Because that work isn't easy and I'm worried that as the lights and the roar of the recent protests fade, we will return to something closer to how it was rather than creating something new that works for everyone.

I can't claim to be an anti-racism expert, but for the past three years, I have been exploring the relationship between purpose work and anti-racism work and think that deepening the connection between the two would help in both efforts. In my experience, anti-racism work increases your sense of purpose, and knowing one's purpose gives you the foundation and the courage to dive deeper into anti-racism work. They go hand-in-hand.

Our purposes

To explain this, let's start with our purposes. I see at least three major ones:

• Our personal purpose 
• The purpose of our company/organization
• The purpose of our country

I define our personal purpose as what we are here to experience and share with the world. Our purpose is core to who we are and was there before and will be there after any particular job/endeavor. That means that our purpose is more about an experience rather than a specific job/role. I'm about people being great, and most people I talk to fall under words like love, joy, happiness, and freedom. Each person has a purpose even if we don't know exactly what it is or if we aren't very good at being it

The good news is that people can access their purpose by asking two questions:

• When you interact with people, how do you want them to feel?
• When you think of how you feel when you experience the words from the first question yourself, how would you describe the feeling of those words in the language that you would have used when you were 10, 11, or 12?

The answer to the 2nd question will be something in the realm of love, joy, or happiness. It will land in the person's gut and make them smile. That is the core of who they are and what they are here to experience and share with the world. I share this here not as a complete training on purpose but to show that it wouldn't take too much extra work to incorporate base-level of purpose work into anti-racism work.

Corporations and businesses create their purposes and are things like: 

• Honest: It's our core purpose and ultimate intention to EMPOWER PEOPLE - through education and solutions - so they can live their healthiest, happiest life.
• Charles Schwab: Strive to champion every client's goals with passion and integrity.
• Hyatt: We care for people so they can be their best… We believe that being your best is about being your authentic self - engaged, fulfilled and ready to take on the world.
• Southwest: To connect People to what's important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel
• Lego: Our ultimate purpose is to inspire and develop children to think creatively, reason systematically, and release their potential to shape their own future - experiencing the endless human possibility.

I'm guessing companies at this point have some purpose or mission statement, so we wouldn't have to re-invent the wheel. It turns out that the purpose of any founder lead company is some combination of the purposes of the founders. That means in a relatively short period, smaller companies and startups that haven't created their purpose statements can answer the questions above, do a little wordsmithing to combine the purposes, and create a useable purpose statement.

Lastly, we have the purpose of our country. The purpose isn't so clear for many countries, given they were founded decades and centuries ago. But fortunately, we do know the purpose of the United States - "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all." Given that we are discussing racism, we must acknowledge that the US promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all and has fallen well short of that for 400+ years. But until we make changes to our founding documents, that is our purpose.

The Corporate Connection

To start seeing the connection between purpose work and anti-racism work, think about your company's purpose. If you don't know it exactly, that's ok. Just think about what it might be.

Then ask yourself:

• How does racism impact your ability to experience and share the corporate purpose? 
• How would that corporate purpose benefit from less racism?
• And how would contributing to the reduction/end of racism be a reflection of that corporate purpose?

For instance, take the corporate purposes above. If you expand "people" to mean all people, "children" to involve all children, and "clients" to include all potential clients, racism negatively impacts their ability to fulfill their purpose. On the flip side, actively helping to address racism would further many, if not all, of their stated goals.

The same thing applies to our personal purposes. I'm about people being great, and the way I see it, asking people to see the greatness in each other is challenging at best when racism is present. Additionally, I feel a deeper connection with my purpose, the more I own where I have and haven't been racist, and learn what I need to learn to reduce the chances of those things happening again. 

I think I am experiencing what Ibram Kendi talks about when he describes the joy that one feels in knowing that you aren't harming others. I know that sounds selfish, but it's true. 

As for our country, given that we are about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, I think it's fair to say that racism gets in the way of that. That means being anti-racist seems like one of the most American things a person can do.  

With these ideas in mind, you can start approaching racism in a way that is authentic to you and not just like what everyone else is doing. Assuming you and your company are experts in your corporate purpose, you will see ways of addressing racism that are special (if not unique) to your business. You can say, "We stand for [XYZ purpose]. Here is how we see racism impeding that, and this is what we are doing about it."

Then, as you share this with clients and explore it more deeply with your staff, you are coming from a place of authenticity that they are more likely to understand and believe. After all, you aren't asking them to do anything completely new. Framing your anti-racism work inside your purpose is merely expanding their awareness of your purpose and how it applies to different people.

For example, Brian Chesky (CEO, Co-founder of Airbnb) writes, "At the heart of our mission is the idea that people are fundamentally good and every community is a place where you can belong. I sincerely believe that [discrimination] is the greatest challenge we face as a company. It cuts to the core of who we are and the values that we stand for."

I'm sure that Brian and Airbnb are far from perfect, but I can see how their anti-racism efforts go hand in hand with their efforts to further their company's purpose of creating community and people belonging. 

There are genuine challenges to this approach, and it isn't a cureall. I'll talk about that in a second.

Making It Personal

To talk about how our personal purpose contributes to anti-racism work, I have to acknowledge this most likely will come across as selfish and self-centering.

It is-100%. I know that doesn't sound great, but I don't know how to get around it or even if we should. I don't think people genuinely take on anti-racism work until they have a personal reason. Seeing how racism impacts one's purpose creates that reason (at least for some people).

With that in mind, think of your purpose (and if you don't know it, imagine something that sounds like a "good" purpose).

Now ask those questions again:

• How does racism impact your ability to experience and share your purpose? 
• How would you and your purpose benefit from less racism in the world?
• And how would contributing to the reduction/end of racism be a reflection of your purpose?

As you answer these questions, I think you will start to see and feel that systemic racism impacts us all. Even if you look like me, racism puts a weight on your ability to experience and share your purpose. That weight isn't always apparent, but I think it's there and more substantial than we realize.

My anti-racism journey started at this point. In the fall of 2017, I was working on developing this purpose model, and #metoo hit. One morning, I woke up with the stark realization that I had to change how I talked about purpose. How could I talk about people seeing the greatness in themselves and others (which is my purpose) when every woman I knew had a #metoo story of some sort? This realization rather quickly expanded to included racism and other systemic biases.

I knew I was still about people being great, but after seeing the response to #metoo and learning more about Black Lives Matter, I realized that my ability to talk about greatness was weighed down. Problems that were once "out there" became personal to me. And I'm sure like you; when things get personal, I'm just more likely to be in action. I went from being a "good liberal" and against racism to someone that started exploring racism at a more personal level. 

The reality was that I was a "good liberal." I even had a pedigree. My dad's parents organized unions in coal mines, and my parents met protesting the Vietnam War in the late sixties. My parents moved to Detroit to be part of a working-class town and named me after Malcolm X (Joseph Malcolm Chandler). We lived on the eastside of Detroit, and I was the only white kid on my block that I can remember. When I was 10 and the running joke, we moved to California when we brought friends over to the house they would have to talk about what they thought of the Iran-Contra Affair. I went to a liberal arts college, majored in politics, and led classes for incoming freshmen about date-rape. After moving to San Francisco, I organized teams of people for the SF AIDS Walk and was a board member for the Black Coalition on AIDS. I had multiple very good black friends, and if you asked me in the summer of 2017, if I was racist, I would have said no way. Through all of that, I never thought, or I had to look at where I had been racist and sexist. 

That all changed between the fall of 2017 and the spring of 2018. I started to explore all the ways that I had stepped over racism in the past. I began to listen to and believe others' experiences as they described the multitude of ways that racism impacted their lives. My racism wasn't the overt type, but I certainly discredited the experience of my friends. They would tell me about the racism they faced, and I would say things like "That can't be right", "I'm sure they didn't mean it", and "you just need to be more positive."

To me, racism was more about their mental state than what was happening to them (aka it was their fault). They rightfully felt like I didn't believe them or understand their life. It was awful. As I explored areas like these in my life, I became present to the never-ending, day after day nature of racism. How it shows up everywhere in so many ways. The more I listened, the more I learned, and the more overwhelming it all seemed.

Even as I progressed, I made seemingly countless mistakes, and it wasn't easy. But I had my purpose as a foundation. When the guilt, shame, anger, and frustration came up, I could take a few breaths and remind myself that I wasn't those mistakes, and even if I did or said something hurtful, I was still my purpose. I could acknowledge what I had done, learn from it, and keep taking baby steps. The most memorable moment for me regarding this was when a friend told me how I allowed people to harm her children. At this point, in early 2018, I was trying to take the "balanced" approach to conversations. She said "when you give space to people who say racism doesn't or isn't as bad as people think, you deny my daughters (who I know very well)." 

I realized that I could be "balanced" and still leave people present to greatness, so I had to take a different approach. Honestly, I am still working on this because I'm not sure how to leave people feeling great about each other when some deny the existence of something that harms my friends. But making the most of one's purpose is often about bumping up against limits, and addressing racism is no different.

With the help and encouragement of a few close friends and many new sources of wisdom, including Lynne Maureen Hurdle, Desiree Adaway, Myisha Hill, Trudi Lebron, Weeze Doran, Andrea Renee Johnson, Daniel Holley, and Charles Su-Wa-Sing I moved forward. Along with looking at the racism in my own life, I started to look at my purpose coaching program to reduce biases and remove culturally appropriated materials. I stated on my website the goal to end racism, and I refused to speak on panels with all/predominately white rosters. I made sure I was connected with diversity experts and listened to them.

Since that day, in the fall of 2017, this work was personal, and that connection kept moving me forward. 

I wanted to bring up this personal connection between anti-racism and purpose work because anti-racism work, when done well, is "unnerving" to quote long-time diversity trainer Catrice Jackson. "Becoming anti-racist is a marathon. Don't expect to be coddled; in fact, expect to be unnerved."

I agree with this, and for that reason, I don't know if a corporate purpose provides enough support to help you in that marathon. Even the most amazing of corporate purposes isn't entirely yours. Even if you are the CEO or founder, there is some disconnection between you and the company. I think the corporate purpose is definitely enough to get you started but in those moments where you have to look yourself in the mirror and say "I furthered racism either through action or inaction and it did harm," you are going to want the foundation that comes with being clear on your personal purpose. At least I did.

If you want your anti-racism work (and your purpose work) to mean something for yourself and others, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable. Ed Catmul, the founder of Pixar and author of "Creativity, Inc." talks about how if you want a company/project to be great, you have to be willing to look at the places where it isn't great.

Purpose gives you a foundation for those conversations, but it doesn't shield you from the challenges. Sharing your purpose makes you even more vulnerable to critique. Once you say "we are about this or that," people can start pointing out all the places where you have fallen short. This applies to your professional and personal purposes.

For instance, the question that I think we all have to ask is what got in the way of us addressing racism sooner? What did we tell ourselves to justify the actions or inactions that furthered racism? The more we can own these answers, the more chance we will have to create that future we want.

Again this is where knowing your personal purpose will help. In any purpose discovery and implementation process, you will look at your limiting beliefs and negative thoughts that are so common in our lives. Things like:

• I'm not good enough.
• What I say doesn't matter.
• They won't understand.
• People don't like me.
• Who am I to say anything.

When you start to think about why you haven't addressed racism sooner, given its impact on people (after all this wasn't the first time we have seen a black man murdered by police on TV), all sorts of similar voices will come up:

• That isn't our thing.
• It's outside the scope of our business.
• We don't have time.
• Talking about it will be bad for my business.

Those probably feel very real, but consider those are limiting beliefs and may not be valid. And even if they are correct, they probably don't align with your purpose. You want to notice those voices because they stopped you in the past. Since they haven't gone away, if you aren't aware of them, they will hinder your current anti-racism efforts no matter how energized you are. 

As for the Country

It's one thing to think about making changes to your personal life or how you run your business to address racism and other biases using your purpose. Still, I think we can agree it's something else to address those issues at the country level. But we do need to move forward and like at the corporate and personal levels, knowing your purpose can help with anti-racism efforts.

One aspect of purpose is that we don't know what our purpose means to us and how to make the most use of it. We may know the words, but we don't know it so well that we can use it in our everyday life. The reason for this is that we have far more experience being who we think we should be than who we actually are. Purpose takes practice.

This applies to our country because we don't have much practice with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. For a range of reasons, the founding fathers wrote those words then quickly began justifying why what they wrote didn't apply to all people. They didn't have a lot of practice living in that world, so they made a series of choices based on what they thought was necessary or possible. Like all of us that make choices that go against our purpose, the didn't (either because they couldn't or didn't want to) see the impact that decision would have on themselves and others in the long run.

Of course, the impact of these particular decisions can't be overestimated. One effect of the decision not to honor life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all is that now we don't have much experience with what those things mean. We spend far more time thinking about the Constitution and its laws than the Declaration. This is akin to how Simon Sinek describes the problems that arise when a company focuses more on the "how and the what" of what they are doing rather than the "why." The Declaration is our why, and the Constitution, and the laws are our how and what.

Before we can do anything, we have to get back to our why. Given that we have never really lived in a country where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all was real, we have to start asking ourselves what those things mean. In terms of anti-racism, we can begin to ask the questions:

• How does racism impact our ability to experience and share life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all? 
• How would life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all benefit from less racism in the world?
• And how would contributing to the reduction/end of racism be a reflection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all?

The one aspect I've found very helpful about this approach is that as far as I can tell, no one is against life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. If people can agree on this, we have a starting point for conversations when we may not agree on much of anything else. These conversations take a while, and I'm not saying anyone should take the time or energy to have them because they are slow. But if you want to discuss the impact of racism with people that don't see it, framing it inside of our country's purpose is a possible option.

It's all about the foundation

With purpose, you have a foundation - something that gives you a framework to look at your racism, sexism, and other bias and the courage to do so. You can dive through the muck on your past, knowing at least somewhere there is a bottom. 

• You can say, "my purpose is XYZ, and in these moments, I did or said something that left people feeling far less than that. I'm sorry."
• As a company, you can say, "we are about...XYZ. We didn't fulfill that when we (did or didn't do something). We are sorry.

Then you can add additional components of the apology:

• This is the harm that I/we think happened.
• This is what I/we learned from that.
• This is what I am / we are going to help reduce the chance of it happening again.

That's ownership. More importantly, it's based on your purpose and who you are. While that action may not feel comfortable, it will expand your sense of your purpose. The more that you look at yourself, the more you’ll learn about your company and culture. The more you look at your company, the more you’ll learn about yourself and your culture, and the more you look at your culture, the more you learn about yourself and your business. It’s all connected.

Plus since you are living your purpose everyday, your desire to be more of your (we are all selfish to some degree after all), will naturally inspire you to keep taking baby steps regarding your anti-racism work. That's why there is a connection between purpose work and anti-racism work. 

• The more you do anti-racism work, the more you will expand your understanding of your purpose.  
• The more you develop your sense of your purpose, the stronger your foundation for doing anti-racism work.

It all goes back and forth. The good news is that there are massive efforts in both of these areas, and we see clear business cases for both. And while these two efforts have not traditionally intersected, I think we have a higher chance of making the difference we want to make in both areas by bringing them closer together.

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Joey Chandler is a purpose coach that works with leaders to grow what makes them great. If you would like to learn your purpose and get support in being more of it, please visit the Greatness Growers Community, If you would like to discuss the intersection between anti-racism work and purpose work, please contact me on Linkedin.